Describe the author's personality and mindset before he met Sai Baba and earned the name 'Hemadpant'.

Before his transformative experiences in Shirdi, the author describes himself in a very unflattering light. According to Chapter 2, he was mischievous, talkative, cynical, and highly critical. He possessed what he sarcastically calls an "'impurity' of knowledge," meaning he was arrogant and always proud of his own wisdom. With a logic-driven mind and what he calls a "bad intellect," he was prone to argumentation and debating. He confesses that he knew nothing of the greatness of a Satguru and was a staunch debater, suggesting a personality that relied on intellectual sparring rather than faith or surrender, which he would later learn from Sai Baba.